So Fred Phelps has died. Let us not celebrate, but mourn.

Fred Phelps, the man who heard the words of the man-deity who said "Love your enemies" and "Love your neighbor" and twisted them into a destructive rhetoric of divine hatred against "teh gays", and eventually against America itself because it did not sufficiently rise up in hate against those gays, has died.

I do not fully understand the depth of hurt that he inflicted on the gay community, or on the families of dead soldiers with his constant picketing of their funerals, so I tread lightly here. I imagine many will celebrate the death of such a destructive, inhuman generator of fuming caustic evil. But as with the death of Osama bin Laden, I may feel relieved that he is no longer able to preach his deplorable vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, but I also acknowledge that he was a human being who was also the beloved of the Creator and has/had just as much access to divine gentleness as any of us. As Jesus said in the sermon On the Mount (Matthew 5), "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."
I can understand the temptation to scream in joy, to run in circles of happiness, and to want to go spit on his grave. But such actions would be no different than what he did. Jesus' continued his above sentences with the following, "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?". Let us not meet evil with evil, but meet evil with love. Love does not imply that we condone the actions of Fred or those whose minds and hearts he warped to follow him. But more hatred, or triumphal celebration, will imply that we condone that his medium was good and holy, even if we felt his message to be anything but. Is the world better off without him? In my opinion, yes. And apparently, even much of his family seem to believe so. Though I wish he could have found a way to repent first. To acknowledge the damage he did to innocent people. To find the center of love in his heart to embrace his neighbors with goodness. To see that the Gospel message is one of love and inclusion, not fear and hatred. I pray that as he meets his Creator, comes to the Lord's outstretched arms, he will find the peace that - so far as I can tell - he never felt on earth.